JERUSALEM: Nine hours of frantic negotiation with the Israeli military. A last-minute scramble to find trucks in a devastated Gaza Strip, where fuel is in short supply. Six hours of frantic packing, carefully stacking cardboard boxes on open flatbed trucks.
With an Israeli airstrike looming, aid workers carried out a last-minute rescue mission to salvage thousands of priceless artifacts from a Gaza warehouse before the building was flattened.
The warehouse contained artifacts from over 25 years of excavations, including items from a 4th-century Byzantine monastery designated as a World Heritage Site by the UN cultural organization UNESCO, and some of the oldest known evidence of Christianity in Gaza.
UNESCO said Israel has damaged at least 110 cultural sites across the Gaza Strip, including 13 religious sites, 77 buildings of historical or artistic interest, one museum, and seven archaeological sites, since the beginning of the war.
The Israeli military said the building housed Hamas intelligence installations and planned to demolish it as part of their expanded military operation in Gaza City.
